Below is the presentation we used during the Creating Chances4Volunteering workshops held in Guildford and Slough this past summer. We had 33 attendees sign up for the two days representing over 20 volunteer-engaging organisations – many those were fellow members of the chances4change consortium. The workshop was aimed at organisations who either did not have SV in place or who were looking to improve an existing project. An abbreviated outline of the presentation might look like this: A few of the major players in supported [...]

There are many national surveys and much research in the UK and abroad that seek to define volunteering (here are just a few links) but we’re going to try and start from a simple common sense approach and try not to get too caught up in these definitions – there will be plenty of time elsewhere to consider policy and funding agendas and the role they play.

What do the words ‘supported volunteering’ (often referred to on this site by the shorthand SV ) mean when used together? To many of you who visit our site this may seem a rhetorical question but our early conversations with other volunteer-engaging organisations have proven otherwise – especially when speaking with those who may rely on volunteers but do not, as yet, have an SV initiative in place. To these folks the question ‘what is supported volunteering’ sounds alot like ‘what do you do to support your volunteers’. But no [...]